Category Archives: Greenbelt Alliance

Benicia CA, California Forever Inc., Fairfield CA, Flannery Associates, Greenbelt Alliance, Sierra Club, Slow Growth, Solano County CA, Solano County Orderly Growth Committee, Solano Sierra Club, Travis Air Force Base

CORRECTION – Here’s how to attend California Forever’s Benicia Town Hall DEC. 14, 6-8pm

[Note from BenIndy: Apologies for the first post of this event, which had the wrong month in the header as well as the headline. DECEMBER 14 is the date of the town hall meeting. It’s unclear, but entry to California Forever’s December 14th town hall meeting may require a mobile ticket secured through EventBrite; you can sign up through EventBrite by clicking this link. You can also email California Forever questions in advance of the meeting. Please plan to attend this incredibly important town hall meeting. It’s essential that Benicians pack the room to demand that the many outstanding questions (and complaints) that have already accrued around this perceived incursion of tech elites apparently seeking to build a libertarian utopia in Solano County are finally answered – to our complete satisfaction. We are owed this much.]

Message from California Forever:

Join us Dec. 14 at 5 pm in Benicia for a town hall meeting as we share big picture ideas and respond to community questions and feedback.

Date and time

Thursday, December 14 · 6 – 8pm PST

Location

Charles P. Stone Hall and Spenger Memorial Garden at Benicia Historical Museum, 2060 Camel Road Benicia, CA 94510

About this event

California Forever: Benicia Town Hall

California Forever was created to bring back the California Dream. We want to do that by building a new community, solar farms, and a greenbelt of agriculture and habitat in eastern Solano County. Doing so would bring thousands of good paying jobs, new paths to middle-class home ownership in safe, walkable neighborhoods, new sources of clean energy, and stronger county tax base to fund essential services for every resident of Solano County.

Since announcing California Forever, we have remained focused on listening to and learning from people representing all walks of life in Solano County.

Our first town halls will share our vision for the project and solicit community feedback to help shape our ideas. Then after we have released our plans for the new community in early January 2024, CA Forever will convene another series of town halls where we will explain and answer questions about our proposal.

We hope to meet you in person at these events soon.

Questions must be submitted in advance to contact@californiaforever.com with the subject line “Benicia Town Hall Question”

Benicia CA, California Forever Inc., Fairfield CA, Flannery Associates, Greenbelt Alliance, Sierra Club, Slow Growth, Solano County CA, Solano County Orderly Growth Committee, Solano Sierra Club, Travis Air Force Base

Here’s how to attend California Forever’s Benicia Town Hall Dec. 14, 5-7pm

[Note from BenIndy: It’s unclear, but entry to California Forever’s November 14th town hall meeting may require a mobile ticket secured through EventBrite; you can sign up through EventBrite by clicking this link. You can also email California Forever questions in advance of the meeting. Please plan to attend this incredibly important town hall meeting. It’s essential that Benicians pack the room to demand that the many outstanding questions (and complaints) that have already accrued around this perceived incursion of tech elites apparently seeking to build a libertarian utopia in Solano County are finally answered – to our complete satisfaction. We are owed this much.]

Message from California Forever:

Join us Dec. 14 at 5 pm in Benicia for a town hall meeting as we share big picture ideas and respond to community questions and feedback.

Date and time

Thursday, December 14 · 5 – 7pm PST

Location

Charles P. Stone Hall and Spenger Memorial Garden at Benicia Historical Museum, 2060 Camel Road Benicia, CA 94510

About this event

California Forever: Benicia Town Hall

California Forever was created to bring back the California Dream. We want to do that by building a new community, solar farms, and a greenbelt of agriculture and habitat in eastern Solano County. Doing so would bring thousands of good paying jobs, new paths to middle-class home ownership in safe, walkable neighborhoods, new sources of clean energy, and stronger county tax base to fund essential services for every resident of Solano County.

Since announcing California Forever, we have remained focused on listening to and learning from people representing all walks of life in Solano County.

Our first town halls will share our vision for the project and solicit community feedback to help shape our ideas. Then after we have released our plans for the new community in early January 2024, CA Forever will convene another series of town halls where we will explain and answer questions about our proposal.

We hope to meet you in person at these events soon.

Questions must be submitted in advance to contact@californiaforever.com with the subject line “Benicia Town Hall Question”

California Forever Inc., Fairfield CA, Flannery Associates, Greenbelt Alliance, Sierra Club, Slow Growth, Solano County CA, Solano County Orderly Growth Committee, Solano Sierra Club, Travis Air Force Base

Solano County environmentalist groups announce new coalition against California Forever project

California Forever proposes to build a new city in eastern Solano. | Image from californiaforever.com.

The Solano Together coalition will consist of a partnership between the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee, the Greenbelt Alliance and the Sierra Club.

ABC10, by Khrys Shahin, November 28, 2023

SOLANO COUNTY, Calif. — The Sierra Club, a Solano County environmentalist group, is the latest to publicly oppose the proposed California Forever city and announced a new coalition they’re calling “Solano Together.”

Members of various Solano County groups spoke Tuesday morning to announce the new change and encourage support from the public against the project.

“Solano County is home to a robust and delicate ecosystem, carefully crafted with all of our stakeholders in mind,” said Princess Washington, Sierra Club chair and Suisun City councilmember. “The Sierra Club of Solano County will oppose any project that is detrimental toward Travis Air Force Base.”

The Solano Together coalition will consist of a partnership between the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee, the Greenbelt Alliance and the Sierra Club.

Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy, Orderly Growth Committee chair Bob Berman and a Montezuma Hills farmer also spoke at the press conference to vocally oppose California Forever. Speakers mentioned the Solano County Orderly Growth Initiative as another reason they’re opposing the proposed new city.

The initiative, passed by voters originally in 1994 and amended in 2008, works to “protect working farms, ranches and watershed areas in Solano County by directing urban growth and development into our cities. ”

Flannery Associates, the investors of the California Forever proposed city, say their project “explicitly adheres” to the initiative by allowing voters to decide what happens.

“(Our project) embodies its very spirit… by asking Solano voters whether they want to turn an area with the least productive and least ecologically valuable soils in all of Solano County into a new economic engine for the county,” said a California Forever spokesperson. “We support the Orderly Growth Initiative and that’s why we’re going directly to voters — allowing them to decide what future they want for themselves and their kids.”

A Montezuma Hills farmer, who was approached by Flannery Associates and rejected their offers to buy her land, says she appreciates the idea of the new coalition and wants to “beat” this project.

“The way that I see a community is sort of an organic, almost a living thing. You don’t just pop a bunch of houses down in the middle of nowhere and expect a community to form,” said Kathleen Threlfall. “You come to a place for many different reasons and a row house is not one of them.”

Washington says the land Flannery Associates owns has been tended to by “generations of farmers who use dryland farming, producing up to 6 million loaves of bread each year” and is grazing land for livestock. Flannery says the land they own has the “worst agricultural soils in Solano County, which is why the area is used for pasture land rather than prime farmland.”

Flannery Associates has told ABC10 their full plan is expected to be released sometime in January, 2024.

California Forever Inc., Flannery Associates, Greenbelt Alliance, Keeping Watch on Earth News

The Greenbelt Alliance Needs YOU To Protect Solano from Sprawl Development

Click the image to be redirected to the Greenbelt Alliance’s donation page.

Message from the Greenbelt Alliance:

By now, you’ve likely heard of the infamous new sprawl city proposed for Solano County that plans to build over 50,000 acres of natural and working lands.

This development would be catastrophic for California’s climate goals by paving over wildlife habitat and climate resilient lands. Billionaire interests behind this proposal are using their unlimited resources to move quickly to the ballot with plans no one has even seen yet.

We have to move quickly as well to ensure that we can mobilize people power to represent the interests of the residents and natural areas that will be affected.

With your help, Greenbelt Alliance will protect and care for Solano County’s natural and working lands.

Right now, we’re hoping to unlock $50,000 in essential funding, with just a few days left to match every gift made. Please, donate now to help us protect this precious landscape and stop sprawl development.

Open space protection is what we do best. Greenbelt Alliance was founded 65 years ago by local community activists sounding the alarm on development proposals just like this that pose significant risks on iconic Bay Area landscapes.

And over six decades later, our work is more needed than ever.

Join our movement with a gift today, and help us protect Solano County lands.

[The BenIndy is not affiliated with the Greenbelt Alliance and was not asked to repost this fundraiser. We’re posting it based on a reader’s suggestion. That’s right, we take suggestions!]